How a Fashion Editor Joined the N.F.L.

New York Times

05-02-2025

Growing up, Kyle Smith did not like sports.
'I was scared of the boys in sports,' said Mr. Smith, 31, who is gay. He described himself as the type of teen who was way more interested in watching 'The September Issue,' the documentary about the inner workings of Vogue.
Mr. Smith, who was born in Connecticut and raised in Los Angeles, was reflecting on his teenage years over coffee last month at the Hotel Alfred Sommier in Paris. He was in town attending the men's wear shows for the first time since being named the first-ever fashion editor of the National Football League.
He started the job last fall with a directive to use fashion and style to reach new audiences through the league's media platforms. Mr. Smith works with athletes to create and share content — photos or videos of them showcasing their off-duty style at events like men's fashion week — and helps players and teams build relationships with traditional fashion media brands like GQ and Vogue.
At Super Bowl LIX on Sunday, he will be part of a team covering what players and other notable attendees wear to the game during a new red-carpet segment that will air as part of the streamer Tubi's Super Bowl broadcast. When he is not traveling, Mr. Smith, who still lives in Los Angeles, works mostly at the N.F.L.'s West Coast office next to SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif.
While the N.B.A., N.H.L., M.L.B. and M.L.S. have also been focusing more attention on athletes' style as the industries of fashion and sports have become more intertwined, those leagues have yet to underscore that focus by creating a job with the word 'fashion' in its title.
Ian Trombetta, the N.F.L.'s senior vice president of social, influencer and content marketing, described Mr. Smith's role as that of a consultant 'for players, and then ultimately the league, in terms of how we're showing up in different moments.'
Though his fashion editor role is new to the N.F.L., Mr. Smith is not. He has worked in different capacities for the league and its associated entities on and off for about six years, including as a stylist to players who have hired him on their own.
He is currently styling Joe Burrow, the Cincinnati Bengals' quarterback, who did not attend the men's shows in Paris because he had instead gone to the Australian Open in Melbourne. Mr. Smith said he helped Mr. Burrow choose clothes to bring to the tennis tournament, traveling to Mr. Burrow's home in Ohio with four suitcases full of options.
Pivotal to Mr. Smith becoming the N.F.L.'s fashion editor was his involvement in getting Mr. Burrow and Justin Jefferson, a Minnesota Vikings wide receiver, to participate in Vogue World, a fashion show on steroids, in Paris last summer, Mr. Trombetta explained.
'The Paris moment was a way for us to sort of recalibrate what Kyle was doing and formalize some things,' he said, citing a growing desire among N.F.L. players, whose teams sometimes set dress guidelines for off-field appearances, to tell stories through clothes. 'Some of them may have really big personalities, and some may actually be a little bit on the shy side, and fashion is their way of expressing themselves.'
Mr. Smith had previously spent more than two years working as a social media programmer for the N.F.L., a job in which he helped broaden the fashion content posted to the @nfl and @nflstyle Instagram accounts (he still oversees @nflstyle). He also cultivated relationships with clotheshorse athletes: Mr. Smith recalled taking some dozen Cleveland Browns players shopping on Rodeo Drive, for example, while the team was in Los Angeles for a game.
He got his first job with the league in 2019: After internships with the celebrity stylist Karla Welch and the brand Amiri, Mr. Smith was hired as a wardrobe assistant for the N.F.L. Network. He remembered receiving a callback for the job while driving to a Costco with his father, and joking with him about the irony of the situation given Mr. Smith's past feelings about sports. ''Wouldn't that be so funny?'' he recalled asking his father.
Mr. Smith said he applied to the job mainly because it was a chance to pursue work as a stylist, but also because his internships had opened his mind to bringing his interest in fashion to an industry that the style world had yet to fully embrace. 'Musicians and actors were covered, athletes needed the same thing,' he said.
At the N.F.L. Network, Mr. Smith helped dress the anchors; when he joined the company, he said, players' style and the clothes they wore for tunnel walks were not given much attention. 'The anchors would say, 'Here's the 10th-best player in the league,'' Mr. Smith said. 'They'd talk about his stats, and I would think, 'Yes, but look at his outfit! Why aren't they talking about that fit?''
He and a fellow wardrobe assistant pitched N.F.L. executives the idea to create an Instagram account documenting players' style, which was accepted. That account is now defunct, but Mr. Smith said it got the attention of many players, who would reach out about posting photos of their outfits.
Marquez Valdes-Scantling, a wide receiver for the New Orleans Saints who has played in the N.F.L. since 2018, said opportunities to showcase personal style were appealing to athletes like himself, who are on teams with as many as 53 players and seen mostly in uniforms that include helmets over their faces.
'We're so interchangeable,' he said. 'You get lost.'
This season, Mr. Valdes-Scantling's schedule allowed him to go with Mr. Smith to the men's fashion week in Paris — it was his first time at the shows. Last year, he founded Luxe Fashion Fest, an event in Tampa, Fla., where Mr. Valdes-Scantling lives, that focuses on emerging brands. (Its second installment is being planned for April.)
On a Friday in late January, he and Mr. Smith visited the showroom of the designer Colm Dillane, better known as KidSuper, so that Mr. Valdes-Scantling, 30, could try on some clothes. As a shirtless Mr. Valdes-Scantling slipped his toned and tattooed arms into a navy suit jacket with pale pink streaks, the men wondered what he should wear underneath.
'I could just wear no shirt,' Mr. Valdes-Scantling said.
'No shirt is very athlete!' Mr. Smith replied.
About 15 minutes later, Ogbo Okoronkwo, a defensive end for the Cleveland Browns, walked into the showroom. Mr. Okoronkwo, who had just been in Milan for the city's men's wear shows, said he started attending fashion weeks in Europe about five years ago. Since then, he added, his style had 'shifted from streetwear to more tailored fits.'
He was drawn to a blazer, but Mr. Smith wondered about the sleeves. 'It's very slim,' he said. 'Your arms wouldn't fit.'
Mr. Smith had said earlier that he thought Mr. Okoronkwo was one of the best-dressed players on what he considered to be the most fashionable team in the N.F.L.
'You'd think it would be a New York or Los Angeles or maybe Miami team — it's Cleveland,' he said, naming Denzel Ward, Grant Delpit and Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah, who is known for wearing traditional Ghanaian ensembles, as being among the Browns's style-forward players.
The day after Mr. Smith and the players had the fitting at KidSuper's showroom, he met Mr. Valdes-Scantling and Mr. Okoronkwo for the designer's nighttime runway show at the Parc de la Villette, a sprawling park at the northeastern edge of Paris.
Mr. Smith, who was wearing Maison Margiela Tabi boots, had to muscle his way through a crowd to get in. 'Fashion is a sport!' he said.
After the show, Mr. Okoronkwo credited Mr. Smith for being 'a bridge' to the fashion world — a world that Mr. Okoronkwo said he once viewed the same way Mr. Smith had seen the world of sports: not very welcoming.
'It was a problem before if you were into anything but grass, football and dirt,' Mr. Okoronkwo said. 'But my love of fashion and photography only helps my game. It's finally normal for football players to like fashion.'